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Month: August 2016

I have come to conclusion that sadism is inherent in human beings. We take pleasure in someone else’s misery. At the same time, we are blinded by our prejudices. We want to take the version of the events which suits our narrative and our built up perception. We like to form an opinion based on what is presented to us, especially when someone who claims to be suffering from something presents it to us. After all, who wouldn’t want to side with the victim? Empathy, too, comes naturally.

We seldom go to the bottom of the things, especially when we get a chance to be a ‘hero’ by taking up the cause of the ‘victim’ and championing the crusade against the person we are told has wronged.

I have noticed this a lot on Twitter. I myself have found Twitter fights extremely entertaining. However, till now, most of such fights were by people I hardly knew. However, recently I came across a few instances where things went way too far. Abusive Direct Messages were sent, some naming and shaming happened, accusations of swindling people of money were put up, personal grudges were taken out against others. Oh, and not to forget the tattoo with a typo.

I went through Facebook profile of someone today who was being trolled for her comments on a sadhu. She came across as a very, very, very lonely person who didn’t really have many friends. She had put up a few notes on Facebook talking about how she feels suicidal. She feels lonely. She feels ugly. She feels she is not pretty. She is really, really troubled. Her comments were nasty. But what has made her so bitter? Was it growing up and being bullied? Does cyber bullying make things worse? Yes, her comments were nasty, but weren’t the replies too? Yes, she had freedom of speech and as did those who replied. But if she’s going to be nasty, do we have to one up our nastiness quotient?

That’s when I realised, what if all other Twitter fights I have seen as ‘entertainment’ were nothing but someone’s personal grudge being taken out? What if her nastiness is a result of being on the receiving end of such nastiness in real life and all the repressed feelings are finally coming out because she stopped caring about what others have to think because she thinks others don’t think about her anyway? Or maybe she’s just pure nasty to the core. I don’t know. But does it really matter?

When and why did someone’s misery become my entertainment? When did I become so insensitive towards other people’s misery? I am a good person. I am extremely sensitive. I even cry while watching Sasural Simar Ka where Simar became a daayan at one point and Rolli had a duplicate/banjaran. I put popcorn salt-clad fingers in my eyes while watching Sultan to rub my tears away, which only furthered my woes. So if I am so sensitive, when did I start taking pleasure in someone else’s suffering? This is not me. This was never me.

Being a sadist is so easy, though. It sucks you in.

I guess I am going to make a conscious effort from now onwards to be nicer.

Unless, of course, if you are Arvind Kejriwal or an avid Aam Aadmi Party supporter.

We are all humans, no? The more we get the more we crave. And when we are denied it, it feels like something we were entitled to is snatched away from us.

Everyone craves attention. Which is natural and normal. The difference, however, lies in how we react to it when we are denied the same.

Some pick up a gun and shoot some kids in school while some go out of their way to alienate the person whose attention they thought they deserved and are entitled to. Often happens when one person gets increasingly obsessed about the other person. Speaking from experience, it is best to cut them off completely from your lives. It is hard. Especially if you are the one whose attention they think they are entitled to. But nothing worse than surrounding yourself with toxic people who suck out your happiness while taking you down with them.

And then there are the self deprecating ones. They are not the once in a while random nobody loves me people. These are the ones who will go out of their way to twist a perfectly normal compliment to something so self deprecating that most people eventually drift away from them because they are *never* happy. And when they are, and you tell them they look good when they’re happy, they will tell you the secret that they are actually quite miserable but putting up a mask because ‘it is easier to hide pain’. Yeah, such people exist. I saw profile of a younger cousin’s classmate. All of 17 years, this girl was insanely ‘sad’ and ‘depressed’ because ‘she does not deserve happiness’ and there are 103 comments on the posts where every single person was trying to tell her otherwise, but she was adamant that she is ‘mein bahut buri hoon na?’ (yea, we all have seen Dil To Pagal Hai) and well, she doesn’t deserve happiness. Avoid people like this like plague because they will never miss a chance to make you feel guilty about yourself.

And then, there are the craziest kinds. They think the louder and hyper they get, the faster the attention they think they are entitled to will come flying to. This involves being rude, loud and extremely vocal. Idea is to speak so much that only you could be heard. Hi, but being loud and psychotic does not absolve you of your stupidity. You get the attention, alright, but everyone around you feels bad for you and think you need therapy and generally calm the fuck down.

But that’s the thing.

Attention.

It’s like cocaine. It’s bad for you, but once you get used to it, difficult to get away from it.

A wise person once told me “two girls can never be friends”. I dismissed it as a sexist theory. But the more thought I put into it, the more I realised how true to reality it was.

This is even more so on Twitter. And if you’re a cynic that friendship on Twitter is not real and all that, then, well, you probably haven’t met good people there. I have come across some of the most amazing people through Twitter, and most of the ones I like more are men. This is mostly because men tend to move on faster than women who go full psycho and stalk and sly tweet the shit out of you.

Women are way more vindictive, especially for other women, than men are. (remember, if an anonymous handle is being abusive to women and giving rape/death threats, then please understand it is an anonymous account and hence no surety that the person behind that handle is a male or a female. I am not talking about abusive tweets.)

Two best friends (women) on Twitter (whether they have met in real life or not) are usually one disagreement away or one ‘common Twitter crush’ away from evidently hostile behaviour on Twitter. This hostility then gets transferred to sharing tweets through DMs with your circle of friends who also don’t like that person. This way, everyone can get together and hate that person. Works both ways. Both parties are basically bitching about each other like there’s no tomorrow.

It is a vicious cycle.

And all this while, they still pretend to be best friends on Twitter.

When they meet, they act as they are so happy to be with each other, while messaging their common circle of haters minute by minute update on their meet up.

The more I observe, the more it terrifies me that I know so much about people I’ve never met, and who, in all probabilities will never know about me. But people watching is so much fun, no? Real life and online, both. The undercurrents – they are so evident.

But I also realise how stressful and negative (although fun) it is. But it is an addiction.